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A series of essays on the development of medicine in the century of the Enlightenment, illustrating the decline in the role of religion in medical thinking, and the increased use of reason.
A Social History of Medicine traces the development of medical practice from the Industrial Revolution right through to the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of source material, it charts the changing relationship between patients and practitioners over this period, exploring the impact made by institutional care, government intervention and scientific discovery. The study illuminates the extent to which medical assistance really was available to patients over the period, by focusing on provincial areas and using local sources. It introduces a variety of contemporary medical practitioners, some of them hitherto unknown and with fascinating intricate details of their work. The text offers an extensive thematic survey, including coverage of: * institutions such as hospitals, dispensaries, asylums and prisons * midwifery and nursing * infections and how changes in science have affected disease control * contraception, war, and the NHS.
First published in 1993, Literature & Medicine During the Eighteenth Century analyses the close interplay of medicine and literature by paying special attention to questions of body language and the representation of inner life. Although today, medicine and literature are widely seen as falling on different sides of the ‘two cultures’ divide, this was not so in the eighteenth century when doctors, scientists, writers, and artists formed a well-integrated educated elite. Locke, Smollett and Goldsmith were doctors, and physicians such as Erasmus Darwin doubled as poets. Written by leading historians of medicine and eighteenth-century literary critics, this book uncovers the interconnections between medical and psychological theory and ideas of taste, beauty, and genius. Its contributors explore the rich cultural milieu of the period and investigate the ways in which medicine itself contributed to informing a gendered discourse of the world. This book will be of interest to historians, literary scholars and medical historians.
The period from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century—the so-called long eighteenth century of English history—was a time of profound global change, marked by the expansion of intercontinental empires, long-distance trade, and human enslavement. It was also the moment when medicines, previously produced locally and in small batches, became global products. As greater numbers of British subjects struggled to survive overseas, more medicines than ever were manufactured and exported to help them. Most historical accounts, however, obscure the medicine trade’s dependence on slave labor, plantation agriculture, and colonial warfare. In Merchants of Medicines, Zachary Dorner f...
A collection of essays exploring the complex history of drugs and narcotics throughout historyfrom ancient Greece to the present dayshows that such substances were sought originally as healing agents, both within and without the medical profession. However, the mood- and mind-altering characteristics of some have led to the widespread abuse and legal controls we see today.
Forget the stereotype! Giacomo Casanova's (1725-1798) reputation as libertine has sadly eclipsed his talents as scholar, linguist, prolific writer and manqué doctor. Fortunately for us, he wrote his memoirs at the end of his life on the advice of his doctor to control his propensity to depression. Although these often have been harvested for information on political, cultural and social aspects of his time, the insights they give about medical practice and the lived experiences of illness have been largely neglected. This book addresses this deficiency through exploring in detail what Casanova wrote on a variety of conditions that include venereal disease and female complaints, duelling inj...
An exploration of the unity of culture in the Age of the Enlightenment, when 18th-century scientists, writers and artists formed a well-integrated elite.